Painshill, or Pains Hill, near Cobham in Surrey, was the creation of the Hon. Charles Hamilton. From 1738 he landscaped the valley of the river Mole and decorated his estate with an enchanting array of garden buildings, including this pavilion which is known as the Gothic Temple. In 1953 Barbara Jones wrote that she feared the park was ‘beyond help’, but thanks to an amazing restoration project, which began in the 1980s and continues today, it has been returned to its former beauty and elegance.

The open temple, probably one of the first ornamental buildings to be erected in Hamilton’s park (the earliest reference found to date is 1761), was constructed of wood treated to look like stone. As well as being an eye-catcher from the walks and rides in the park, its location was carefully chosen so that visitors would be led to the building from which they could admire a panorama which featured a Turkish tent, a gothic tower, a bridge, a hermitage and a classical temple. On a circuit of the pleasure grounds the visitor would also encounter a ruined Roman arch and a grotto decorated with sparkling minerals.

Barbara Jones described Painshill in Follies & Grottoes, published in 1953. Her first thought was that Hamilton (1704-1786) was a visionary. She imagined him looking at the ‘naturally pretty’ valley and having the courage to turn it into ‘raw earth, puddles, planks and little naked trees’, knowing that ultimately it was ‘going to be alright’. Whilst Jones mused on the origins of the park, Rose Macaulay, whose Pleasure of Ruins was published in the same year, delighted in the decay, describing the neglected park as a ‘delicious wilderness of follies’.

A photograph of 1937, taken by Herbert Felton for the Architectural Review, shows the temple in reasonable condition. The art historian Osvald Sirén (1879-1966) explored Painshill in the late 1940s, and in his China and the Gardens of Europe, published in 1950, he described the Gothic Temple as being in a ‘better state of preservation’ than many of the other garden features (Sirén was spotted photographing the ruined buildings by a young John Harris (1931-2022). Happily for history, the nascent country-house snooper had ignored the ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ signs.)

Whilst some of the garden buildings were lost because of neglect, others had fallen victim to deliberate destruction: the hermitage was apparently chopped up for firewood in the 1940s. Harris saw the Temple of Bacchus as a crumbling wreck in the 1940s, and it had disappeared when he returned in 1954. When a visitor in around 1960 enquired after the temple he was told that it had ‘got a bit dicey so they took a tractor to it’.

By the 1970s the temple was rapidly falling into dereliction, and in February 1977 Elmbridge District Council served a repairs notice on the owner of the park and sent in a team to support the temple within a scaffolding shell. Two months later came big news when the council confirmed that, after some years of negotiation, they were to purchase 47 acres of the ‘much neglected Painshill Park’.

Heritage societies, including the Georgian Group, the Garden History Society and the Council for the Protection of Rural England had already been working behind the scenes to gather information, and in 1973 the historian Alison Hodges had published the first comprehensive history of the garden in Garden History, the journal of the Garden History Society. The Friends of Painshill was founded in 1975, with support from landscape architects, antiquarians, journalists, M.P.s and local residents.

It took until 1980 for the council to acquire a further 106 acres of the park. In 1981 the Friends issued their second newsletter, in which it was announced that ‘Elmbridge Borough Council have now appointed Mrs. J. Burford as the first full time administrator of the park’. One of the earliest structures to be restored was the Gothic Temple (grade II*), with work complete in 1985.

The Painshill Park Trust was founded in 1981 and work began to raise the required funds. One of the principal sources was the National Heritage Memorial Fund, created in 1980, which by 1988 had pledged £1.4 million ‘towards a management plan and towards continuing restoration work’. In 1988-89 the British Museum hosted Treasures for the Nation: Celebrating National Heritage, an exhibition showing the public how the fund was using taxpayers money to save the UK’s most important heritage treasures. Painshill was featured as an example of a garden rescued with the help of NHMF funds, and the text noted the garden as a rare example of one which ‘did not suffer violent change, but was simply abandoned to the hand of time’.

It is impossible to summarise here the vast amount of research, fundraising and building work that took place in the subsequent years (the restored and dazzling grotto alone is a magnificent achievement, and the Temple of Bacchus, toppled by tractor, has been reconstructed), so visit the website to learn more, or better still visit the park itself.

There are some who, whilst full of admiration for the restoration, have a nostalgia for the ‘mystical and wonderful’ ruinous park that they explored as a child, when it was in that condition which the artist John Piper called ‘decrepit glory’. As Henry Parr, who sent the Flâneuse the pre-restoration photographs shown here, wrote: ‘in its ruinous state, Painshill park was beautiful but mysterious, pretty but sinister, lovely but rather unnerving’.

The thrill of pushing through overgrown shrubs and stumbling across an abandoned temple might be gone but, thanks to the amazing restoration project, one once more sees Painshill as Charles Hamilton envisioned it.

There’s lots more on Painshill here. Thanks to historian Cherrill Sands for being an excellent cicerone.

Thank you for reading. As ever, the Flâneuse would be delighted to hear from readers with any thoughts or comments. Scroll down to get in touch.

The tower on Leith Hill was erected in the 1760s by Richard Hull. The hillside wasn’t actually his property, but his home was nearby and he leased the plot from the landowners, the Evelyn family of nearby Wotton. It became a popular attraction and in 1790 it was said that the view from the tower was ‘esteemed equal, if not superior, to any in the kingdom’. Hull was so fond of his tower that he designated it as his mausoleum.

From the very start Hull, who lived at Leith Hill Place, intended the tower to be a public amenity to be enjoyed by ramblers and day-trippers. A plaque was placed above the entrance and, in summary, the Latin inscription recorded that the tower was built for the prospect, which Hull wished to be enjoyed by all.

Hull died in 1772 leaving an extraordinarily detailed will in which he gave some ‘further direction’ for his executors, setting out how he wished to be laid to rest. He desired to be buried in a very private ceremony, with only his servants present, ‘in a Grave made for me under my Tower on Leith Hill’. A plaque recorded his death as having taken place on 18 January 1772 and stated that he had purchased ‘Leith-hill Place’ for his retirement where he lived as a ‘true Christian and rural Philosopher’.

Soon after Hull’s death the tower was allowed to decay and, ‘accelerated by the hands of the mischievious’, the interior was stripped leaving the tower a shell. In 1788 the antiquarian and traveller William Bray told an audience how sorry he was to find that the tower was ‘already become a ruin’. Although the plaque on the tower gives a date of 1766, it has clearly been recut at some point (the stone has eroded but it appears to give the date of construction in a bizarre combination of Roman and Arabic numerals as MDCC66), and Bray gives the more likely date of 1763, which is corroborated by title deeds which mention the tower in 1765.

In the last years of the eighteenth century William Perrin of Tanhurst, who then owned Leith Hill Place, had the exterior of the tower ‘thoroughly repaired’. To stop further vandalism the lower room was filled with ‘lime and rubbish’, and the entrance walled up. He also raised the height of the tower to make it ‘still more conspicuous as a sea-mark’.

In 1864 William John Evelyn of Wotton added a staircase turret to the tower so that the views from the top could once more be enjoyed by what Barbara Jones called ‘county counters’. She didn’t specify just which shires are allegedly visible from the rooftop, but in 1899 it was suggested that ‘visitors with a glass’ could see twelve counties and a circuit of 200 miles.

In the later years of the ninetenth century tourists could also enjoy teas and ginger beer provided Mrs Skilton, the custodian of the tower. After 30 years in that post, aged 72, her sight was apparently so good that she could see the dome of St Paul’s, ships in the English Channel and Windsor Castle without a telescope. She also claimed that forty churches were visible from the top of the tower. There are countless picture postcards of the tower showing the many visitors who climbed the hill, but sadly no photographs have been found showing the kangaroos that Evelyn ‘set loose’ on Leith Hill, although they apparently ‘flourished for years till gradually exterminated by ruthless individuals’.

The tower also inspired the artist Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), who could see it from his studio. He used it as a model in a number of works, including this watercolour of the ‘high lonely tower’ in Milton’s Il Penseroso

In 1922 the tower was offered for sale, and there were fears that public access would be lost. In March 1923 it was announced that ‘all lovers of rural Surrey’ would rejoice to learn that the tower, and five acres of land around it, were to be given to the National Trust, thanks to the generosity of Reigate businessman W. J. MacAndrew. The tower was restored in 1984 when workmen uncovered Hull’s tomb during the works.

Follies have appeared on stamps, stamp-books and coins, but this is the first example the Flâneuse has found of a folly on a sugar cube wrapper. At date unknown Tate+Lyle featured Leith Hill Tower on a wrapper which celebrated Surrey as the home of the Magna Carta. How many people idly stirred two lumps into their coffee without even noticing the handsome folly on the wrapper?

The tower can be climbed on certain days in the summer season, taking visitors to the highest point in the county, and there is always access to the hillside to appreciate the exterior. As early postcards show, it was a stiff climb up to the tower, but today a car park on the slope of the hill allows a gentler ascent. The wider site remains part of the Evelyn’s Wotton Estate, and public access is managed by Surrey County Council. A cafe operates from a hatch at the foot of the tower serving light refreshments (alas, no sugar cubes with a view of the tower). Leith Hill Place is also in the care of the National Trust and can be visited in the summer season. There’s more access information here.

Thank you for reading. As ever your thoughts are very welcome, as are any further examples of follies on sugar cube wrappers. Scroll down to find the comments box at the foot of the page.

In 1938 readers of the Surrey Advertiser were baffled by an announcement that the Earl of Inchcape was seeking permission to build a ‘Martello Tower’ on his Chinthurst Hill estate. Following up on a notice published the previous week, the paper felt the need to explain to its readers what a Martello Tower was. The article described the purpose of the defensive towers that had appeared during the Napoleonic wars, and the writer then concluded that ‘it seems improbable that Lord Inchcape’s proposed tower will be exactly similar to the coastal originals’.

Kenneth Mackay, 2nd Earl of Inchcape (1887-1939) was a barrister by training, and chaired many companies including the Westminster Bank and the P&O shipping company, as featured in this cartoon from Punch in 1927:

In 1937 he bought the Chinthurst Hill Estate, with a house designed by Edwin Lutyens in the 1890s and a Gertrude Jekyll garden. The selling agent described the estate as sitting in ‘probably the finest position in Surrey’. Inchcape intended it as his retirement home – he also had a London property in Grosvenor Square and the Glenapp Castle estate in Scotland.

Lord Inchcape’s proposal to build his tower was reported in the last days of February 1938, and work was quickly underway. The Surrey Archaeological Society was kept informed of discoveries of flints and other discoveries made as the building of the ‘Martello Tower’ got underway.

Lord Inchcape died suddenly in 1939, aged only 51, so he didn’t have much time to enjoy his new tower. Very few accounts of its early history can be found, but in one of the accounts of Lord Inchcape’s death it is described as ‘commanding views of some of Surrey’s prettiest scenery’. An article in the Daily Express was more sinister in tone, noting that the gardens featured ‘bomb-proof’ shelters and that the tower was ‘gas-proof’ with blinds that ‘close tightly at the touch of a button’. This report suggests that Inchcape’s ‘Martello Tower’, with war looming, was indeed defensive, but this information is not repeated elsewhere, and attempts to discover more, including the name of the architect, have drawn a complete blank.

The Chinthurst Hill Estate left Inchcape family ownership in the early 1950s, with the tower then described as a ‘lookout’. In 1961 some outlying parts of the estate were offered for sale by auction in twelve lots, and there were fears that Chinthurst Hill would fall into the hands of developers. Surrey County Council, with strong local support, bought sixteen acres of the hillside as a public amenity, and the purchase included the ‘stone tower known as THE FOLLY’ which gave ‘panoramic views’. The three-storey tower was described as being in a ‘neglected condition’ and in 1964 funds were allocated to restore the tower and create a car park.

Sadly the restored tower, seen above, remained a target for vandals and quickly deteriorated. In 1986 the tower was given a grade II listing by English Heritage: at that date it was roofless and the windows were boarded up. Sadly this is how it remains today.

The tower is however still a fascinating feature at the end of an invigorating uphill hike, or a ramble on a gentler circular stroll. When the Flâneuse visited very recently the walk was cushioned by a carpet of sweet chestnut husks, and it wasn’t just the tower that glowed in the sun.

Public access to Chinthurst Hill is managed by Surrey County Council and the conservation of the woodland by Surrey Wildlife Trust. There’s more information on parking and walks here.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts, as ever, are most welcome. The comments box can be found at the foot of the page.

In rural Northumberland an elegant stone column rises in a field. A passer-by would guess it to be an eighteenth century ornament, and they would be right: work to erect it was completed in 1786. But it was not built in Northumberland, where it has stood for a mere century. The monument actually started its life at Felbridge in Surrey, some 350 miles to the south.

The monument was commissioned by James Evelyn (1718-1793) of Felbridge Place, in Surrey, from the architect Sir John Soane, whose original designs show a fluted column. This was rejected in favour of a plain column, but this tweak to the design would still keep the stonemason busy: the shaft carries a Latin eulogy to Evelyn’s parents, and is also inscribed with the 13 verses of Joseph Addison’s Hymn to Gratitude — or rather 14 verses as the penultimate verse was added to Addison’s original. The story goes that a local clergyman felt 13 verses was inappropriate and added one of his own. The drum is carved with the motto Manners Makyth Man and is encircled by a snake swallowing its own tail, representing eternity. Just two years after its completion The Honorable John Byng passed by and noted the ‘extraordinary monumental obelisk’.

The serpent gave rise to the local legend that the monument was erected to mark the spot where two people and a horse were killed by an enormous snake. A local reporter called the story ‘absurd’, and was bewildered that it was ‘firmly believed in by many local people’

The Felbridge Place estate changed hands a number of times after Evelyn’s death. In 1924 it was on the market once more, with the ‘memorial column’ included in the deal. A year later a diarist in a local paper wrote that the column was deteriorating rapidly, and that if something wasn’t done soon the top of the ‘grand piece of stonework’ would come ‘crashing down’. He ended with a question: ‘will not the owner of the estate show sufficient interest to have it repaired?’ In short, no, they wouldn’t, as the land was destined for lucrative housing development.

But someone who did show an interest was Stephen Aitchison (1863-1942) who had recently bought and restored Lemmington Hall, near Alnwick in Northumberland. History does not seem to record how Aitchison learned about the monument, but he purchased it and the plot of land on which it stood. The monument was dismantled in February 1927, and a local paper reported that ‘while deeply regretting that there was so little public-spiritedness in the village of Felbridge that this beautiful obelisk was not acquired and preserved in situ, it is gratifying to know that it is not to be demolished but is to grace northern instead of southern England’.

The dismantled monument was then moved north to be re-erected as an object in the park at Lemmington. Writing in Country Life in 1978, Margaret Hudson states that the work was completed in 1928 at a cost of £1,470.

It is appropriate that Aitchison was erecting a monument to gratitude in 1928, for the New Year Honours list of that year bestowed upon him a knighthood (he would be created a baronet in 1938). Although some of the lettering on the monument was recut after it was moved north, the family appear to have added no words of their own.

And now a confession: the Flâneuse did not see the column at close quarters as the field in which it stands was home to a herd of boisterous beasts. Hence the slightly blurry image above, taken from the edge of the field. But the excellent Geograph website saved the day with this image:

Meanwhile, the Uncouth Companion was earning his wings as a trainee drone pilot:

In 1995 Felbridge Parish Council began to consider how to mark the Millennium. One suggestion was that the column be returned to its original home. It is unlikely that anyone took this suggestion very seriously, as the cost would have been enormous (even assuming that the then owner had agreed to part with it). Unsurprisingly, the column (grade II*) remains in its northern home.

And as if the lovely column wasn’t treat enough, after viewing the column you can turn and look to Lemmington Branch, a castellated hilltop folly (history yet to be investigated) now converted into a very smart house.

When James Evelyn, the original builder of the monument, wasn’t commissioning fine monuments he was carrying out good works. As well as founding a village school he established the splendidly named Beef and Faggot Charity which ensured that the poorer members of his local community were cared for. There’s an account of the charity, which continues today, here.

You can read the whole of the hymn featured on the column here.

Lemmington Hall was leased for many years to a convent, but was sold by the Aitchison family early this century. It has recently been renovated as a wedding venue.

Thank you for reading. Comments and thoughts are always welcome – scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch.

In 1839 Charles Booker leased a plot of land in the corner of Guildford’s ‘Great Hilly Field’. There’s a clue to his purpose in the name of the site: Booker needed an elevated spot on which to build a ‘prospect tower’. After his death the adjacent land became the town’s cemetery, and the tower passed to the Burial Board (who were reluctant custodians). It later came into the control of the town council, and a contract was signed in 1927 to allow its demolition. But by a quirk of fate the tower survived, and stands tall today.

Booker (c.1780-1859) was a businessman and pillar of the community who served as a Justice of the Peace and was three times Mayor of Guildford. Why he chose to build a tower is subject to some argument: some sources say it was a monument to his two sons Charles (1809-1824) and Henry (1812-1827) who both died at the age of 15 – Charles of illness and Henry in a ‘melancholy accident’ when he drowned in the town’s river Wey while bathing. Their resting place in the churchyard of Holy Trinity is clearly visible from the tower, but if the tower was a memorial to the boys it is curious that Booker waited for more than a decade to erect it. Other sources say the tower was built simply to ‘gratify a personal whim’. Although now hidden in trees the tower would certainly have been a prominent statement of Booker’s wealth and status when first constructed.

In June 1839 Booker leased the land for his tower from James Stedman, agreeing to rent 40 square feet at the south-west corner of  ‘the Great Hilly Field and Cradle Field for building a prospect tower’. For a total of 6 shillings per annum Booker also had a right of way across the field. The tower was built by a local builder, the suitably-named John Mason, but no architect’s name is recorded. Soon after completion the ‘newly-erected and elegant tower’ became a focus of Guildford’s celebration of the marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in February 1840. A royal salute was fired from the tower during the daytime and the tower was ‘beautifully illuminated’ and the venue for a ‘pretty display of fire-works’ on the evening of the wedding. By then the building was ‘pretty generally known as Booker’s Tower’, and it was named as such on the tithe award of 1841. From the top Booker and his guests enjoyed wide-ranging views of the countryside and of the rapidly developing town.

Booker died in 1849 and the small parcel of land, complete with tower, seems to have reverted to Stedman. In 1856 the tower became the responsibility of the Burial Board which had bought the field from Stedman to lay out Guildford Cemetery. Stedman gave the tower to the board on condition that they keep it in good repair: this they did with some reluctance as many felt that ‘the building in question was of no utility to the ratepayers, and totally unnecessary for the purposes of the cemetery’. Grudgingly, the board honoured the terms of the donation (once it was clear they couldn’t wriggle out of it) and repaired the internal staircase which allowed visitors to admire the view from the top.

One who climbed the tower was the gentleman scientist John Rand Capron. He had an observatory nearby and in 1885 set up equipment at the top of Booker’s Tower for his experiments in ‘Atmospheric Electricity’.

In 1927 the local paper featured the headline ‘Booker’s Tower to Topple’ and it was revealed that the tower was in a dangerous condition. The council invited ‘competent House-breakers, Contractors and Builders’ to tender for its demolition and nine applications were received. These ranged between £50 and £507.10.0 and, unsurprisingly, the council signed a contract with Charles Strickland of Stoke Newington, who had submitted the lowest figure. Strickland advertised the sale of the stone from the tower in the local paper, but ended up in court on charges of fraud, having accepted a cheque for £25 but not produced the goods.

Whilst Strickland’s case went through the courts, the council began to have second thoughts and in ‘a passing fit of repenting sentiment’ decided to repair the tower, albeit on a very limited budget of £100 (less than half the sum the builders who tendered had suggested was necessary).

In 1928 the Borough Surveyor, J. W. Hipwood, drew up plans for a ‘reconstruction’ and provided two options: a tower with or without battlements. No prizes for guessing that the battlements were binned and the cheaper version with a simple parapet won the vote. The Sussex Advertiser thought even £100 too much to spend on a ‘building with nothing to recommend it’. Remembering that it had been known as ‘Booker’s Folly’ the paper thought that investing in its future would be ‘to add folly to folly’.

The newspaper concluded that the tower ‘will be demolished eventually there can be no question’. Almost a hundred years later the tower still stands, having survived the great storm of 1987 which toppled some of the trees that had grown around it. Local sentiment and a grade-II listing suggest that it will around for some time yet: it is kept in good repair by Guildford Borough Council but there is no access to the interior.

Special thanks to readers Ian and Helen Wright for suggesting Booker’s Tower as a subject. Ideas for future posts are always welcome.

Thank you for reading and do please share any thoughts or comments – scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch.

In the town of Camberley a truncated tower stands on a hilltop surrounded by trees. This is the surviving remnant of an elegant tower, built by John Norris, which stood on the open country known as Bagshot Heath. It has been known since its earliest days as ‘The Obelisk’, for in the 18th century the term was sometimes used to describe any tall, tapering structure. Although only a sorry stump remains, it has the most fascinating history.

Norris (1721-1786) lived at Hawley House, just over the border into Hampshire, from where his tower would have been visible. Norris built the Obelisk in 1775 as a ‘Place of Pleasure’ and it quickly became a landmark alongside the ‘Great Road’ from London to Devon (roughly the modern A30).  It was noted by 18th century tourists as a great curiosity, for they would have seen it from many miles away, on what was then bare heath, and wondered at its purpose. One who enquired was told it was built by Norris as something to ‘look at’: an eye-catcher from his house. It quickly became known as ‘Norris’s Whim’.

As an important landmark the Obelisk was marked on road and county maps, including Thomas Milne’s survey of Hampshire, which also shows Hawley House. Milne’s map, surveyed in 1788-90 and published in 1791, included sections of the bordering counties and has a lovely little representation of the obelisk on its hilltop. Its lofty situation was such that it could be seen from Hampstead (it’s not clear if a telescope was involved), and its prominence in the landscape was noted in a decidedly dull and clunky poem of 1793:

On Bagshot Heath an obelisk you see
Much easier to be viewed than any tree.

What ‘pleasure’ Norris took at his tower is not known for sure. There are stories that the King used it when hunting on Bagshot Heath, and the Obelisk is certainly mentioned in passing in reports of the King’s days in the field in the 1790s. It would certainly have been resorted to for picnic parties where the family and their guests could dine and enjoy the panoramic views. There is also a tale that Norris used the tower to signal by heliograph to his friend Sir Francis Dashwood at West Wycombe: the two men were certainly friends, but no firm evidence for any signalling activity can be found.

The sharp-eyed will have spotted that the map above does not feature a town called Camberley. The settlement only developed after the establishment of the Royal Military Academy, now better known as Sandhurst, in the early years of the 19th century, and as the caption of the watercolour above shows it was originally known as ‘Cambridge Town’. Young students at the college were responsible for much of the graffiti on the base of the Obelisk, but setting a precedent in 1801 was one William Cobbett (not the radical and rural rider). Cobbett recorded in his diary that he had paused on the ‘desolate heath’ and spent ‘an hour cutting my name in large and deep letters’.

Amongst those who left their mark was Gentleman Cadet B37, Edward Henry Clode Braddon (1844-1907) from Liskeard in Cornwall. He was admitted to the college on 1st February 1861 aged 17 years and 10 months and passed out on 31 December 1862.

John Palmer Brabazon (1843-1922), also a Gentleman Cadet, arrived at the college from Swinford in Co. Mayo in August 1860 and passed out on 31 December 1861. He went on to have a ‘distinguished military career’ and served as Aide de Camp to Queen Victoria. He spent his later years in London, where he was remembered as ‘the last of the Victorian dandies’. In 1913 Tatler magazine said he was ‘one of the best known men in the paddock and the shires, and is not unknown in the boudoir’.

By the later 19th century Camberley had spread and the Obelisk stood in the grounds of a house called The Knoll. Sometime around 1880 there was a fire in the tower which caused damage to the upper stories, and when a new owner bought The Knoll in 1882 he ordered the ‘removal of the defective part’. Mr Allcock of Camberley successfully tendered for the work, and with great enterprise recorded the process in photographs which were then sold locally: the bad news is that they don’t seem to survive.

In 1889 the owner tried to sell off a parcel of land which included the Obelisk and, as evidence that estate agent hyperbole is nothing new, the site was described as ‘the healthiest spot in the world’. But it doesn’t appear that anyone wanted this ‘most choice residential retreat’, as the land remained undeveloped.

In the early 20th century The Knoll became a school. By 1965 it was home to St Tarcisius’s Roman Catholic school, and in 1965 the headmaster, Mr Aiden Mackey, began to push for the ‘dangerous’ obelisk to be pulled down. ‘I would like to see it gone’, he declared, adding that he would like the site to be an open space where children could have outdoor lessons.

George Poulter, Curator of the town’s museum, disagreed, and thought it would be a ‘very sad moment’ if the obelisk, the town’s most ancient building, was lost. All of this was reported in the Evening News which repeated the story that the tower was used to signal to West Wycombe in the 18th century. However the newspaper anachronistically suggested that the communication was by Morse code, which prompted a letter to the editor from the writer and art critic F. Gordon Roe pointing out the mistake. The News Editor accepted this was an error, assuring Mr Roe that the ‘reporter concerned has been taken to task’.

But the article had got people talking, and happily for the Obelisk public opinion was in favour of retaining the landmark. In 1966 Sir Francis Dashwood’s descendant Mr Francis Dashwood wrote to Surrey Heath Council suggesting that the tower be rebuilt, but whilst the idea was welcomed, the project was never going to meet the planning committee’s proviso that it must not ‘cost the taxpayer a lot of money’. Instead, the brickwork was repaired and the council took custodianship of the Obelisk. In 2002 the Surrey Heath Local History Club pointed out that the town’s Local Plan of 2000 committed the council to felling a small number of trees to ‘create important views both to and and from the obelisk’, which was by then totally hidden by the surrounding wood. The Council voted against four trees being removed to open up the vista.

Today The Knoll/St Tarcisius’s School is gone: the site has been redeveloped for housing, and the remains of the Obelisk are lost in trees on the edge of Camberley Park, which was created in 2000 with the Obelisk on its mount as the main feature. Sadly the grade II listed Obelisk is currently inaccessible behind a sturdy security fence because of problems with vandals (who by the standards of their ‘work’, did not commit an hour of their lives as William Cobbet once did). This is a great shame as the Obelisk is the oldest building in Camberley and the graffiti makes it a rather unusual monument/museum to generations of young cadets at Sandhurst. Hopefully Surrey Heath Council can soon find a way to manage access and allow locals and visitors once again to enjoy the very attractive walk up to Mr Norris’s Whim.

Special thanks to Steve Harris of Surrey Heath Council and Nick Clifton of Surrey Heath Museum, and to Dr Sebastian Puncher of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst who identified two of the cadets who left their mark.

If you can add any further information, or would like to share any thoughts, please scroll down to the comments box (only your name will appear online, your email address remains private). Thank you for reading.

The ruinous shell of the Whitehill Tower stands on high ground with extensive views across Surrey and down towards the south coast. It was built by Jeremiah Long in the middle of the 19th century as an ornament in the grounds of his Surrey villa, but has been neglected for years and desperately needs attention before it topples to the ground.

Long (c.1804-1886) described himself as a ‘builder’ in the 1841 census, but over the next decades promoted himself to ‘Surveyor, Valuer and Estate Agent’ and ultimately ‘Landed Proprietor’. His portfolio of properties included several houses in London, a seaside retreat in Brighton, and Arthur’s Seat, a country estate near Caterham, described as a ‘delightful residence situated on one of the prettiest hills and overlooking one of the most magnificent landscapes to be found in the picturesque county of Surrey’. By the time of his death in 1886 he was a ‘Deputy-Lieutenant of Tower Hamlets, a governor of Christ’s Hospital, and of numerous other London & provincial charities.’

His first son Jeremiah William was born in 1829 and there was then a gap of ten years before further sons joined the family. By this time Long seems to have been expecting great things from his boys, and named them accordingly: Caesar Alexander, Claudius Horatius and Arthur Antoninus. The younger three attended St Nicholas College (now Lancing College) in West Sussex, and it was here in 1858 that young Arthur and two schoolmates were tragically drowned, whilst bathing in the river Adur (the story has, as ever, become twisted in the telling, and some accounts incorrectly state that he was drowned at sea, or at Chelsea Reach). Arthur was buried in a ‘1st Class Family Vault’ in the then new City of London Cemetery, and the Register of Internments poignantly records that he was aged ’13 years and 364 days’: he died the day before his 14th birthday.

Legend has it that this sad event caused Jeremiah Long to erect the tower near his Surrey home. Whilst the building may have been in part a tribute to his lost son, a plaque on the tower records a much simpler explanation: the tower was erected to enable Jeremiah Long, of Arthur’s Seat, White Hill, to ‘have a rich view of the country’. The tower was also an eye-catcher within the grounds of the house. There’s no explanation for the choice of ‘Arthur’s Seat’ as the name of the house – one will read that it was because Long was a Scotsman (he was born in Warwickshire), or that there is an ancient earthwork nearby by that name (nothing is shown on maps). And if the name was some sort of tribute to his youngest son, then it was made during his lifetime as the house was known as ‘Arthur’s Seat’ by 1857.

A second plaque on the tower tells that it was erected in 1862. The designer of the tower and of Arthur’s Seat was probably Long’s architect son Caesar (1839-1898). Jeremiah had invested in land in Caterham, and as well as erecting his own home he and Caesar advertised plots of land on which to build ‘first class villa residences’.

There was little praise for Caesar, and the scant information we have on his career is buried in the pages of local newspapers. The buildings he is most associated with were all endowed or supported in some way by his father, suggesting a degree of nepotism. His major work was the Vestry Hall in Shoreditch, later extended as Shoreditch Town Hall, and it was during the construction of that building that he fell out of favour with some of the committee for making decisions without their authority. In one of the more peculiar defences offered to a committee a Mr Turner begged that they ‘make allowances for Mr Caesar Long’ on the grounds that he ‘was no ordinary mortal’, but one whose ‘idiosyncrasies should be respected’.

Since the late 19th century Caterham Barracks had been a depot for the foot guards regiments, and during the First World War the tower was used as one of their guard rooms. In March 1915 one of the soldiers wrote a brief account of life there on the postcard above. He recalled how ’22 of us used to “hang out” & cook for ourselves in this old watch tower […] each room was only 10 feet square, so you may guess that with equipment & rifles we were some squash’.

The uppermost section of the tower does not match the style or materials of the lower storeys (the quoins are brick, not stone), and may have been a later addition – perhaps to give more distant views. This would have made it perfect for military purposes and would account for its alternative name of the ‘Sight Tower’

Sadly, the last one hundred years have not been kind to the tower, and it has become dilapidated. It is not protected by listed building status and is in urgent need of consolidation to secure its future.

The tower is on private land but can be seen from the public road close to where War Coppice Road meets Whitehill Lane.

Thank you for reading. Further information and comment is always welcome, please scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch.

Denton Welch was a talented artist and writer, but his career was sadly cut short by his early death in 1948. A few years before he died, he described an ornate 18th century grotto in one of his novels: the fabulous grotto was for real, but it was demolished in the same year that Welch died, making his description all the more poignant.

Denton Welch (1915-1948) was an unhappy, motherless schoolboy, on a summer break from Repton school, when he joined his father and brothers for a holiday in the early 1930s. This experience inspired the novel In Youth is Pleasure, published in 1945, in which Denton Welch becomes the fifteen year old Orvil Pym.

The opening lines set the scene:

‘One summer, several years before the war began, a young boy of fifteen was staying with his father and two elder brothers at a hotel near the Thames in Surrey. The hotel had once been a country house…’

Although not named in the novel, the hotel was Oatlands Park. In the 18th century the estate was home to the Duke of Newcastle, and amongst his landscape embellishments was an amazing grotto. Its early history has been well-told elsewhere, so only the briefest of summaries is necessary here: there were three chambers in the lower storey, one of which contained a cold bath, and a banqueting room above. The grotto was decorated inside and out with fossils, tufa and shells and one of the floors was made of polished horses’ teeth. A visitor in 1783 wrote that ‘it gives one the idea that it was intended as a Mansion for the Queen of the Fairy.’

In the novel Orvil sneaks out of the hotel to explore, and first encounters a ‘cottage orné’ in the pleasure grounds. Feeling ‘delightfully like a criminal’ he jemmies open a window to climb inside where ‘everything was in a terrible decay’.

There was stained glass in the windows, and a ‘grotesque’ little fireplace. Elaborate Gothic paper, designed to imitate stone arcades filled with cinquefoil tracery, ‘hung down from the walls in weeping strips’. Upstairs, the ceiling had collapsed and throughout there was a ‘terrible smell of death and decay’.

The impressionable Orvil longed to renovate the cottage as his romantic retreat, but sadly, no-one would ever have that pleasure. The ‘cottage orné’, also known as the Hermitage or Grotto Cottage, survived for only a decade or so after Welch’s visit. It continued to decay and disappeared completely some time before the Second World War.

To return to the novel, Orvil leaves the cottage and enters the grotto, where he is astonished by the decoration: ‘All the walls of the cave were lined with giant shells, feldspars, quartzes, stalactites and fossils. In one place, a thin trickle of water dripped from pink lip to pink lip of enormous scallop-shells’. Welch’s prose is deliciously sensuous, and prepares the reader for the next scene when Orvil, ‘tremors’ passing through him, progresses through the chambers only to discover two of the hotel guests in a compromising position (you will have to read the book to find out more).

Welch fills the reader in with some historical detail, whilst allowing young Orvil to be entirely innocent of it: ‘King George IV had once been entertained to dinner here by the son of the duke who had made the grotto, but Orvil knew nothing of this. He loved the grotto for itself alone as something beautiful and strange’.

In 1870 the Grotto was described as ‘ugly and neglected’ and ‘sadly dilapidated’ by none other than Queen Victoria. Wartime vandalism caused further damage, and by 1947 it was in urgent need of repair. The hotel owner felt unable to meet the costs of renovation and, considering the building a danger to the ‘innumerable trespassers, whom barbed wire and the strongest chains have failed to keep out’, applied for a license to demolish. This was approved by the local authority, which failed to raise the issue with the County Council, despite an undertaking to do so. Despite last minute attempts by heritage bodies to save the structure, it was demolished in the first months of 1948, only a few years after Barbara Jones recorded the interior.

Happily, Dorothy Grenside, the then curator of the Weybridge Museum, had the foresight to request permission to collect ‘specimens and fragments’ from the grotto before demolition began. As well as some of the decorative rockwork, she also took custody of the marble Venus which stood in the bath chamber.

The Twickenham MP Edward Keeling felt that the Grotto had been let down by the system. The Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 had introduced the listing of historic buildings, but compiling the lists was a slow process. Keeling raised the matter of the grotto in Parliament, urging the Minister of Town and Country Planning, Lewis Silkin, to ‘accelerate the issue of lists’, concluding that there must be no ‘further such ignorant demolitions’.

The Architectural Review ran an article on the destruction of the grotto under the headline ‘Vandalism Triumphant’. Marcus Whiffen wrote that the demolition was a ‘tragic business’, and shared Keeling’s frustration that the Town and Country Planning Act had failed to safeguard the structure.

In May 1948, Lavender Westwood told the tale of the demolition in Country Life, and took some consolation from the fact that the ‘wanton’ destruction had proved ‘considerably longer and more expensive than was anticipated.’ Writing in his journal that same month, Welch’s dismay is apparent in his terse opening sentence: ‘They have destroyed the Grotto at Oatlands’, and he concluded ‘When something beautiful and fantastic that will never be made again is destroyed, one feels that the earth is just that bit drearier…’

To conclude on a slightly brighter note, in 1937 Welch was one of the young artists whose work featured in the Shell advertising campaign ‘To Visit Britain’s Landmarks’, which focused on British follies. Welch painted Hadlow Castle, aka May’s Folly, which was close to his home in Kent. So after a largely monochrome post about two sad losses, here’s some colour to cheer you up.

For the early history of the grotto and the Oatlands landscape a quick internet search will lead you to a series of articles by garden historian Michael Symes. This link will take you to a paper on the grotto by Tim Knox https://georgiangroup.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GGJ_1992_10_Knox_0001.pdf

In Youth is Pleasure was recently reprinted as a Penguin Classic https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/319/319677/in-youth-is-pleasure/9780241464137.html

Oatlands Park is still a hotel, but sadly without the glorious garden ornaments https://www.oatlandsparkhotel.com

Weybridge Museum is no more, but the collection, including the Oatlands grotto artefacts, can be seen on the Elmbridge Museum website. There is, for instance, a photo of the statue of Venus here https://elmbridgemuseum.org.uk/collections/?keyword=venus&searchbut=doSearch&object=&collection=&timePeriod=&place=&personOrg=&AccessionNum=

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts are always welcome: please go to the bottom of the page to share any comments.

The Folly Flâneuse confesses she has never visited Broadwood’s Folly in Surrey, and although she seldom writes about buildings she has never seen, the photo below explains the interest. Finding an English sparkling wine named after a folly was just too good an opportunity to miss in this festive season.

So before the drinking begins a little about Broadwood’s Tower on Box Hill courtesy of Andrew Wright, Countryside Manager for the National Trust, who also provided the lovely images of the folly.

The Tower was built by Thomas Broadwood of the famous piano manufacturing family. In 1813 he was given the impressive title of ‘Musical Instrument Maker in Ordinary to His Majesty’ and in the following year he bought the Juniper Hill estate near Dorking in Surrey. Soon after he leased a further plot of land in an elevated position overlooking the estate, and here he built this prospect  tower with panoramic views.

The tower is now in the care of the National Trust. It was stabilised in recent years after the removal of a holm oak which had grown from a seedling within the roofless tower.

Throughout 2019 The Folly Flâneuse has travelled far and wide to see follies and garden ornaments and visited countless archives, museums and galleries to gather information. But this post added a new destination to the list. On a cold, damp and dark November afternoon The Folly Flâneuse could be found in Aldi … which retails this wine* from the Denbies Estate below the tower..

The Folly Flâneuse is taking a short break and will be back in January. Wishing you all the very best for the festive season and health and happiness in 2020. Cheers!

To visit the tower https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/box-hill/features/all-change-at-broadwoods-folly-box-hill

And there’s a You Tube video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6uZp0Vw5mQ

*Actually local branches didn’t, so the festive fizz was purchased online.

Oswell Blakeston (1907-1985), was born Henry Joseph Hasslacher, and created his nom de plume by condensing ‘Osbert Sitwell’, whom he admired, into ‘Oswell’ and adding his mother’s maiden name. He was a British writer and artist with wide interests, and one of his passions was follies; his role in bringing the genre to a wider audience deserves to be better known.

In a letter of 1953 Barbara Jones thanked Blakeston for the loan of his ‘folly suitcase’, which she had used as a major resource when writing the first edition of Follies & Grottoes. Her book was published in that same year, with special thanks to Blakeston in the acknowledgements.

The pair had probably been introduced by John Betjeman, who had known of Blakeston’s interest in follies since the 1930s. Betjeman had been working as a copywriter for Jack Beddington, Shell’s Publicity Manager, at the time that Beddington was commissioning young artists to produce artwork for advertising.  This included the series of posters which promoted motoring (and therefore sales of petrol) and adorned the sides of lorries as they sedately travelled the roads of Britain.

It was Blakeston who suggested follies as a subject for a series of posters, shortly before his report on ‘Architectural Follies’ was broadcast on the wireless in October 1936. Blakeston’s idea came to fruition as the ‘To Visit Britain’s Landmarks You Can Be Sure of Shell’ campaign, which ran throughout 1936 and 1937 with 27 posters produced, each by a different artist.*

The contents of the mysterious ‘folly suitcase’ were assumed lost, but in fact they are in the collection of the RIBA and can be consulted in the Architecture Study Room at the V&A Museum. The valise is long gone, but Blakeston’s county-by-county files of notes and clippings on follies are there alongside transcripts of his radio broadcasts. His correspondence shows that other writers and photographers of the period also relied on his help. The ‘folly files’ were also borrowed by husband and wife team Edwin Smith and Olive Cook when they were researching the Gothic Revival.

Looking at Blakeston’s output as a writer it is easy to see why he didn’t find time to publish his folly research himself. He wrote on film theory, on photography (Cruising with a Camera) and on travel, and also wrote 15 novels, 10 volumes of poetry and the occasional one-act play. He authored three books on food, including the rather niche Cooking with Nuts. His long term partner, the artist Max Chapman, contributed illustrations to many of these works. Long before Morph or Aardman studios used the technique, Chapman modelled figures in clay and then photographed them to illustrate a book for older boys, Jim’s Gun; ‘unusual and attractive’ said a reviewer. Blakeston’s art didn’t achieve wide acclaim in his lifetime, and is largely forgotten today. His work was considered avant garde, or as one establishment critic preferred to call it ‘the childish fumblings of a youthful dilettante.’

As well as the folly files in the RIBA Architecture Study Room there is a large deposit of Blakeston’s papers at the University of Texas at Austin https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingaid.cfm?eadid=00014

Thanks to the Shell Heritage Art Collection for permission to reproduce the two posters. The collection is based at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, Hampshire and items from the large collection are always on display. Watch out for an exciting new touring exhibition in 2020 https://nationalmotormuseum.org.uk/collections/shell-heritage-art-collection/news/

* For a fully illustrated account see ‘Visit Britain’s Landmarks: Follies on Shell Advertising Posters in the 1930s’ in The Follies Journal Vol 5 http://follies.org.uk/index.php/journal/